Virus found – explorer.exe crashes when loading cmd or regedit – antivirus won’t update

We’ve had a spate of customer’s machines get infected with this over the last week. Had us scratching our heads for a few hours … thought it was conficker or some variant but it seems not. Looks like it was actually Trojan:Win32/Daonol.B
Symptoms
Causes some or all of the symptoms below :-
1. Antivirus software won’t update from [...]

Choosing between Live Mesh / Live Sync / Live Drive for synchronising files between PCs

We’ve been using Microsoft Groove for a couple of years now to synchronise a shared company folder between our geographically distributed users. It hasn’t been touched since it was set up two or three years ago and I’ve been wanting to revisit and look at alternatives for a while.  Groove is overkill for us and [...]

Windows / Linux / Mac

People continually badger me (in a completely good natured way of course!) for concentrating on the Windows platform.  I have tried Mac OS (briefly) & Linux of various persuasions over the years. Want to know why I’m still stuck with MS?
1. It’s what all our customers use 
We work in the SME sector in the [...]

Reinstall of Vista – what software goes back on?

It’s nearly Christmas! And the phones were quiet this afternoon (for once!). And my PC at work has been driving me around the bend for the last 3 months, so it was time for drastic action …..
After a fresh reinstall of Vista SP1 64bit – here are the tools that are pretty much essential to [...]

Chrome mania

A lot has been written this week about Google’s recent foray into the browser market. Been using Chrome for a week or so now and have to admit that I like it a lot. I’ve always been an IE user and over the last couple of years I’ve tried Firefox, Safari, Opera – I tried [...]

I definitely want one of these!

Cray Inc., a name long linked to some of the world’s biggest computers, is breaking from tradition and introducing a low-end machine that can sit next to a user’s desk.
The new computer, which starts at $25,000, uses chips from Intel Corp. and ships with a version of Microsoft Corp.’s Windows software. It is designed to [...]

Launchy … get quick access to your programs

Here’s another neat little application I use all the time. Launchy runs in the background and provides a way to load applications quickly from the keyboard.
Hit Alt-Space and type the first few keystrokes of the application you want to launch – then Enter and away you go. If your Start Menu looks anything like mine [...]

Data center in a box – add power & network and away we go!

Living life in the SME sector we’re more used to having to deal with this :-
 
 
Than this :-
 
 
Microsoft are supposedly adding servers at a rate of 10,000 per month. One way they’re doing this is with “container data centers” – basically prefab data centres in a trailer! It seems these things come ready [...]

Xobni – Outlook Plugin to Organise, Collate, Track, Search, Correlate your email

It’s not often I come across a bit of software which immediately impresses me as much as this little Outlook plugin! It has to be one of the most focused, fast & effective tools I’ve seen in a while. Xobni sits alongside the Outlook sidebar and shows information relevant to the currently selected email.
At [...]

SQL Replication Fun!

We use Microsoft SQL Server as the back end for our Retail Management & EPOS software. On most systems we use merge replication configured with pull subscriptions. Recently we’ve had a few instances of the replication mysteriously hanging on a merge – the first sign is usually the client calling to say their system is [...]